The founder
8-min read.
Burnout doesn't announce itself loudly. It's not like a break-up text or a redundancy letter. It's more like a houseguest who stays too long. You only notice they've moved in when you're already out of clean towels.
Autumn 2024, I was burning out. Less of a dramatic fire, more slow dampening of something already quite damp.
It started with colds one after another, over six months, I'd lost count. My immune system had apparently decided that fighting viruses was someone else's problem. I'd recover, or so I'd tell myself, only to wake up three weeks later with the same scratchy throat. That particular exhaustion that makes you question whether breathing is actually worth the effort.
The sleepless nights became torture. I'd lie awake in the early hours, mind running through everything. All the things I hadn't done or needed to get done, trying to keep too many plates spinning and not wanting to let any drop. All the conversations I should have had differently. My body would be completely exhausted, but my brain had apparently checked into a different hotel entirely.
My adrenal glands were doing their best impression of a phone on 1% battery. Everything required effort just to get through.
The worst bit was the numbness. That grey feeling where you go through your day in emotional beige. No highs, no lows, just an absence. The world would happen around you and you'd observe it the way you might watch paint dry. Without much enthusiasm.
May 2025, my GP looked at my test results and said the words that change things. "Pre-chronic burnout." Which is a medical way of saying, "You need to stop doing what you're doing and start doing something different. Now."
But life had already made that decision for me.
In August, my marriage of 21 years ended. Everything I'd assumed was solid turned out to be considerably more fragile.
I moved to a new place and started to rebuild. Through all of this, I was still doing what I'd always done. Pushing. Optimising. Measuring myself against some invisible standard. Even whilst falling apart, I was judging myself for not doing it efficiently enough.
That was the moment I had enough of chasing.
My bike became the one thing that made sense.
On the bad days, and there were many, I'd get out early. No segments to chase. No times to beat. No social validation required. Just the simple act of moving my body in a way that felt less like punishment and more like something approaching self-care.
The bike did something remarkable. It let me be present without achieving anything.
I didn't realise at the time that I was searching for exactly what I'd lost. A sense of being here, in my own life. Not optimised. Not measured. Not constantly checking whether I was doing it right. Just here.
Then I made the rookie mistake of opening the apps.
Several cycling apps. A smartwatch. A fitness dashboard. I thought they'd help me understand whether I was actually recovering. Perhaps they'd offer evidence that I was getting better.
Instead, they compounded my issues.
The leaderboards turned my refuge into a competition I hadn't entered. Rankings. Segments. That gentle-but-aggressive nudge to "try again" and do it better. Every notification whispered: you should be pushing harder. You're not good enough. You're not fit enough. Everyone else is doing better.
My smartwatch offered a relentless stream of feedback about how poorly I was doing everything. Heart rate too high. Sleep disrupted. Activity too low. It was like having a very judgmental coach living on my wrist.
Performance metrics dominated every single ride. Power output. Cadence. Max heart rate. The apps screamed for data, screamed for optimisation, screamed for more. Even though I was riding to escape the noise, the apps were dragging me right back into it.
I'd grabbed my bike as a lifeboat. The apps turned it into an anchor, dragging me down further.
But here's what I realised. Every time I pushed myself harder on these apps, I was adding stress to a body and mind that were already overwhelmed. The apps were telling me to do more when what I actually needed was to do less. That push for more performance was directly working against my recovery.
Cycling apps aren't designed for recovery. They're engineered to keep you coming back. Every feature is designed to make you feel like you're not doing enough. Every leaderboard, every notification, every comparison is meant to trigger that feeling of not being good enough.
This works brilliantly if you're chasing times. But what if you're not? What if you're broken? What if you're using your bike to rebuild, not to achieve? What if you need the exact opposite.
I realised that for people like me, the apps themselves were the problem.
So I asked a question that felt almost dangerous. What if we built an app designed to lower stress instead of creating it? Not for performance athletes. For people in recovery. For people who needed their bikes as refuges. People who wanted data without the pressure or the comparison.
In Japanese, 'Kiru' means "to cut."
Not aggressively. Not dramatically. Just to cut through. To remove what's unnecessary. To get to what's essential.
That's what I needed to do with my life. Cut through the noise. Cut through the expectations. Cut through a culture that says you should always be optimising, always be pushing, always be more.
Over the next months, everything changed. Not quickly. Not miraculously. Just slowly.
I stopped pushing my body. That alone felt radical. No structured training plans. No zones to hit. No metrics to chase. Just riding when it felt good and resting when it didn't. Turns out, your body is quite good at telling you what it needs if you actually listen.
Wellbeing and mindfulness became the focus. I started meditating my way. Not the traditional way. Just finding what worked for me. I walked. I slept when I could. I was present for the people I care about.
But here's the thing about recovery. Your body doesn't respond on schedule. You don't get to optimise healing. For months, I was still numb. Still tired. Still waking at 03:00 with a racing mind. I'd do all the "right things" and nothing would shift.
Then, sometime around month three or four, without any fanfare, something changed.
I slept through a night. Then another. The numbness didn't vanish. It just receded. Bit by bit. I'd notice colours again. Music would land differently. Conversations stopped feeling performed and started feeling real.
The anxiety didn't disappear but it became manageable. The colds stopped coming.
About burnout: It doesn't whisper warnings. It just slowly turns everything grey. Your body is trying to tell you something very loudly. Most people don't listen until they've fallen completely over.
About recovery: It's not about doing more. It's about doing less. It's about cutting away what doesn't serve you and protecting what does. Recovery is an act of rebellion against a culture obsessed with more, faster, better.
About support: Being close by to support the people you care about during difficult times matters. It's not about grand gestures. It's about showing up consistently.
About technology: Apps should serve your wellbeing, not extract it. Most fitness tech is designed to make you feel inadequate so you'll keep coming back. What if, instead, it was designed to let you be whole?
About myself: I was more fragile than I thought. And more resilient, too. The year I thought would break me became the year that actually rebuilt me.
Kiru isn't for everyone. It's not for people chasing leaderboard fame or obsessed with being the fastest.
It's for people in recovery. Those rebuilding after burnout, using their bike as medicine. It's for the mindful athlete. Those who believe that how you train matters as much as how fast you go. It's for anyone who wants data without the pressure. Anyone who understands that the best ride isn't the fastest one. It's the quiet one.
It's been a year and a bit now since that autumn when everything started unravelling. I'm not "better." I'm not "cured." I'm not 100% again. I'm learning that's not actually the goal.
Recovery isn't a destination. It's more like learning to walk differently. Some days are genuinely good. Some days I still wake up with that familiar weight. Some mornings I catch myself slipping back into the old patterns.
But the difference is, I notice now. And I course-correct.
I sleep most nights. I still get ill sometimes. I'm human, not invincible. I ride my bike because it feels good, not because I should. There are still nights where my mind races, but they're less frequent and I know what to do about them now.
The numbness hasn't completely vanished. It visits sometimes, usually when I've stopped paying attention to the basics. That's when I remember. This is the practice. Not meditation once, but meditation my way, when I need it. Not rest as a destination, but rest as an ongoing choice. Not 'healed' but learning to live differently.
My bike is still my refuge. The app I built protects that refuge instead of threatening it. And every time I use it, I'm reminded that this journey is the point. Not getting back to how things were. Getting to something better.
That's Kiru. That's why it exists. And that's why I built it for anyone else who's figured out that recovery isn't about being fixed. It's about being honest about what you actually need.
Which, it turns out, is a lot simpler than we've been told.
If this resonates. If you're cycling in recovery, looking for a tool that serves your wellbeing instead of extracting it. Kiru is waiting.
Download from the App Store. Try the free tier. Experience 30 minutes of Pro access without entering a credit card.
We cut through the noise so you can find your flow.